


Thank You Notes Are Better Given In Person

by Butternuggets



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Cute Ending, Fluff, Gen, Leonard "Bones" McCoy is a Good Friend, Post-Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23838544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butternuggets/pseuds/Butternuggets
Summary: Edith Smith was given a pill by a brown-haired, blue-eyed doctor while awaiting dialysis treatment at Mercy Hospital, which caused her to grow a new kidney.Her grandson Tommy never forgot the family theory that the doctor had come from the stars.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	1. Gamma Edi and The Doctor From Mars

'Yes, it just grew back-'

'A miracle-'

'A man, she said-'

Edith smiled as she ran her fingers delicately through Tommy’s hair and listened to her daughter’s voice echo down the hall. She was sitting in bed, propped up on pillows, her grandson on her lap and a mug of hot tea on the bedside cabinet. She had been back from hospital a little over a week now, but the phone was still ringing off the hook.

The clamour of reporters and nosy journalists had died down surprisingly quickly, but every living relative and family friend had come out of the woodwork to try and hear the story first for themselves. In order to get some peace and quiet, she had asked her daughter to come and stay, to answer the phone for her and turn away any lurking media personnel.

Tommy stirred, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up, burrowing into her side. He was being home-schooled until the circus blew over, and she enjoyed being able to see more of him.

‘Gamma Edi, will you tell me about the space man again?’ Edith nodded, and took a sip of her tea. Tommy grabbed his teddy bear and stared up at her, wriggling with anticipation.

‘I was lying in the hospital bed in the corridor, waiting for the one of the nurses to come and get me. Well, a doctor came striding down the hallway and he must have heard me groaning because I was. I had a little bit of pain in my side, see?’

Tommy’s smile dropped and he reached out, gently patting her hip. ‘Does it hurt now?’ he asked, concerned. Edith smiled and shook her head. ‘No, I feel much better, thank you.’ Tommy nodded and settled back down for the rest of the story.

‘Well, he stopped, and he said, “What’s the matter with you?”’ Edith lowered her voice to a gruff, gravely pitch, and Tommy giggled. “I told him I was in for kidney dialysis and he looked shocked, just like this’ she pulled a surprised face and Tommy giggled again.

‘What’s kidney die-al-ee-sis?’ asked Tommy. His mother, Alice, had explained that Edith was sick but not was wrong. They had both felt at the time that it wasn’t the sort of thing a six-year-old needed to know.

‘Put your hands behind your back’ Edith pressed Tommy’s palms flat against his back. ‘Right there inside is your kidneys. They get rid of all the nasty stuff inside you that might make you sick. But sometimes they need a little bit of help and that’s why your Gamma had to go to hospital, so the doctors could help.’

‘But now they don’t have to, because the special doctor fixed them right up’ Tommy smiled. Edith nodded. ‘He sure did, honey.’

‘He said “Dialysis? What is this, the Dark Ages?”, then he pulled a little pill out of his little black doctor’s bag and he put it in my hand. He told me to swallow it, and to call him if I had any problems, and then he was gone!’

Tommy grinned, and curled his fingers around hers. ‘How do you know he was a spaceman?’

‘Well, all the other doctors and nurses, they searched high and low all over the place for him. It was like he just went ‘poof!’ and vanished into thin air. And I might know a little about a lot of things, but even your Gamma’s never heard of a miracle pill that grows people a new kidney.’

‘So I reckon he flew down to Earth for something, and just happened to be passing through, and he was kind enough to help your old Gamma out with her kidneys.’

‘Yay!’ Tommy squeezed his teddy bear, laughing with delight. He had heard the story three times now and was still enraptured by it. Personally, Edith didn’t think that she would ever forget the encounter. Or the man’s face.

‘What did he look like Gamma?’ Tommy flopped over the side of the bed, resurfacing with a box of crayons and a sheet of paper.

‘He was tall and lanky,’ Tommy started scribbling. ‘He had a fussy mop of brown hair, just like Ragamuffin.’ Ragamuffin was the family cat, an elderly powder-puff of thick brown fur. He slept in a cardboard box at the foot of Tommy’s bed, and occasionally beside him on his pillow.

‘He had the bluest blue eyes I have ever seen.’ Cornflower blue, with deep crow’s feet crinkling the edges of them. Serious but kind. _Smiling eyes_. He’d sounded Southern, but then she supposed that even space must have a ‘south’ somewhere.

‘Like this Gamma?’ Tommy finished and held up the paper towards her. Edith nodded and Tommy’s face split into a beaming smile.

‘That’s him exactly!’

The portrait Tommy had drawn was just a wonky stick figure, but artists have to start somewhere, and he’d managed to keep his colouring in the lines.

‘That’s a beautiful drawing’ Edith admired it for a minute, then handed the paper back. ‘Why don’t you go stick it on the fridge for me?’

‘Ok’

Tommy scooted off the bed and sprinted down the hall. ‘Don’t forget to draw him a spaceship so he can fly away home!’ Edith called after him. She took another sip of her tea, smoothed the blankets, and smiled as a gentle rainstorm began to pour down outside.


	2. Its Been A Long Time

The shuttle ride down to Viirre-5 had been smooth. It was the only way onto to the planet; transporters were offline due to a recent dust storm, but the weather had settled down enough to accommodate small landing craft.

The ground cracked and snapped as Tommy strode towards civilisation. Viirre-5 was a tiny speck amidst a whirling blanket of stars; an inconsequential little backwater on the very fringe of Federation space. The locals were hostile to outsiders. So was the planet.

By the time he made it to the edge of town, there was a thick film of red dust coating Tommy’s clothes, boots, and hair. He felt like he had stumbled into one of the cowboy movies he used to watch as a kid. Suspicious eyes peered from behind closed curtains and shuttered windows. Groups of people huddled together on street corners glared openly at him. Tommy kept his shoulders relaxed and his head up, trying to look open and trustworthy.

There were three bars on the main strip; Tommy eyed them all, picked out the cleanest-looking, and went inside. ‘A glass of water please’ the waitress placed it in front of him as Tommy pulled a piece of paper from one pocket. ‘And directions. I’m looking for a Dr McCoy. I was wondering if you might know where he is?’

The waitress looked at him, smiling confidently. ‘Everybody knows the Doctor’ she gave the photograph a quick glance. 

‘He’s a little older than that now honey.’ She frowned. ‘You’re not planning on causing him any trouble are you?’

Now it was Tommy’s turn to smile. ‘No, no, I’m not. I’ve come a long way to see him, to thank him. He helped my grandmother; I just wanted to pop by and let him know that the family’s grateful.’  
The waitress smiled and laughed.

She gave him directions to the agriculture facility on the other side of town and soon Tommy found himself standing in the doorway of a long white building with a red roof. He fidgeted nervously, shook himself, and rang the doorbell.

‘Can I help you, son?’

A shock of white hair, a slightly wizened, wrinkled face. Intelligent blue eyes staring up at him. Tommy smiled. The photograph he had seen in Starfleet’s records was some fifty years out of date but it was definitely him.

‘My name’s Tommy Smith. You helped my grandmother out a long time ago; I just wanted to come by and say thank you.’

Bones’ face broke into a warm smile.

‘Well now, you’re very welcome. I’m afraid I don’t recall your grandmother off the top of my head. I’ve had a lot of patients over the years, you know.’

Tommy grinned.

‘You visited a hospital in San Francisco, California. My grandmother was there getting a kidney dialysis-’

‘But that was in 1986!’ Bones inched his wheelchair forward, his jaw hanging slack from shock. ‘How the hell are you here now?’

‘Well, sir’ Tommy beamed, as Bones ushered him inside the house, ‘It’s a long story.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I'll cave:
> 
> Gamma Edi passed away peacefully in her sleep when Tommy was 18. 
> 
> At the funeral, Tommy swore that he'd make her proud and fufill a funny promise that he'd made to her when he was younger: he would thank the space doctor for helping her.
> 
> So Tommy became an astronaut.
> 
> On his first mission, the shuttle carrying himself and three others unexpectedly encountered a strange wormhole which opened up as they were returning from a mission to Mars. Their shuttle was pulled into it; badly damaged, they drifted in an unknown region of space until a Federation ship picked them up.
> 
> Presumed dead, and with no way of getting home, the crew relocated to futureEarth and tried to cope with their new situation. Tommy found work as an engineer aboard the ship that had rescued them, and eventually graduated Starfleet via correspondence course while serving.
> 
> A chance encounter with an enthusiastic Kirk historian led him to uncover the fact that the Enterprise crew had been on Earth in the 80s. A quick search later and Tommy was stunned to find himself face to face with a photograph of Dr Leonard 'Bones' McCoy.
> 
> It was definitely him. Tommy had been carrying a sketch of the man's face in his breast pocket since he'd drawn it at age fifteen, to Gamma Edi's exact specifications. The photo matched perfectly.

**Author's Note:**

> I just really love the hospital scene in Star Trek IV so when my brain came up with this, I decided to heed the call and finish it ^^


End file.
